1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to printers, and more particularly, to an improved error control system for a printer.
2. Description of Related Art
The discussion will begin with a description of an error control system for a conventional page printer. In such a conventional printer, when an error occurs during the printing of a page which does not require the printer to stop printing, the page printer continues to print the subsequent pages. An example of such an error which does not require the printer to stop printing is, e.g., an insufficient memory capacity for processing the received data or for developing an image. In the event of this type of error, the user of the printer is informed of the occurrence of such an error either through an error message displayed on a liquid crystal display or by means of an error sheet, which indicates the nature of the error and which is printed out upon occurrence of the error.
FIG. 1 is a flowchart illustrating the operation of the conventional error control system, used to inform the user that an error has occurred.
In FIG. 1, steps S2 to S11 illustrate the procedure followed by the conventional system in responding to an error that does not require the printer to cease operation, i.e., allows the printer to continue printing subsequent pages. As shown in FIG. 1, when such an error occurs (Step S8) an error message is displayed or printed out on an error sheet (Step S9). Thereafter, the printer clears the display of the error message and resumes the printing operation, to print out the subsequent pages (Step S11).
While there are many circumstances which may cause errors, some errors are simply caused through improper settings of the statuses of the printer. One example of such an error is an insufficient memory allocation for processing the received data or developing the image. To prevent such improper status-induced errors from occurring, the user must check the current statuses and change the current statuses to proper statuses, if necessary. To facilitate such a status check, the conventional printer may provide a function which prints out the current statuses on a status sheet. In FIG. 1, this function corresponds to Steps S4, S14 and S15 (see, e.g., Examined Japanese Patent Publication No. Hei. 4-22708).
It should be noted, however, that in the above-described method, if the error message is displayed on a liquid crystal display, the error is displayed only while the page concerned is being printed and is no longer displayed once the next page is being printed. This may cause the user to overlook the error message on the display. As a result, the user is likely to use the printer continuously while it is set to the same erroneous statuses, without ever eliminating the cause of the error. This, in turn, allows similar errors to recur.
On the other hand, if the error message is printed out on an error sheet, error sheets imparting the identical information are repeatedly generated, i.e., every time the same error recurs. This, in turn, leads to a needless waste of paper.